Cash to preserve and digitise historical documents

Documents detailing the ownership of the Penrhyn estate are among those to be restored

Four archive services in Wales will share £28,000 to carry out conservation work on fragile and damaged items.

The funding for services in Wrexham, Denbighshire, Bangor and south Wales will help conserve items subject to restricted access due to their condition.

It will also see them digitised and made available online.

The work is funded by the Welsh government and the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust.

Bangor University Archives will use the money to safeguard maps from the Penrhyn Estate.

As well as documenting the estate and its owners, some of the maps detail the social history of Bangor, and include letters from Florence Nightingale detailing her concern about the re-occurring outbreaks of cholera in the slums in 1882.

Denbighshire Archives will protect borough charter documents issued by monarchs between 1290 and 1662, which give details of the early-mid medieval period to the administration under Charles II.

The designs for coal mine pumping engines for the UK and abroad made by Neath Abbey Ironworks, which contributed to south Wales' part in Britain's industrial revolution, will be restored by West Glamorgan Archives Service.

Wrexham Archives will preserve medicinal recipe and prescription books of chemists L. Rowland and Son Ltd (Numark).

They evidence the early development of a business, which has since become the national brand Numark, and members of the family, many of who went on to become members of the town council.